


lean on me

by somalester



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Getting Together, Hurt Steve Rogers, M/M, Medical Procedures, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Protective Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-25 22:21:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17733725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somalester/pseuds/somalester
Summary: To be quite honest, Bucky expected this to happen earlier, and more dramatically, too. Not the going to the hospital part of course; Lord knows he’s had to sit beside Steve’s bed more often than he wants to think about.Steve’s never had to have surgery though.





	lean on me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hufflepuffmish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hufflepuffmish/gifts).



> I'm not sure if this is a present or a punishment but happy birthday anyway. You're the only one I would betray stevetony for.

**lean on me**

To be quite honest, Bucky expected this to happen earlier, and more dramatically, too.

Not the going to the hospital part of course; Lord knows he’s had to sit beside Steve’s bed more often than he wants to think about.

Steve’s never had to have surgery though.

It’s not like Bucky has worried about that in the past, thank you very much. So what if Steve’s constant disregard for his own health left him terrified someday something would go horribly wrong that couldn’t be fixed with medication? One couldn’t live around Steve Rogers for an extended period of time without ending up in that proverbial hole.

“You don’t need to stay.”

Bucky blinks himself back to the present. “Oh I’m sorry, I didn’t realize this was even a discussion.”

Steve rolls his eyes at him. “You heard the nurse, it’s gonna be three hours at least.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows. In all the years he’s known Steve, they both have never been anything but stubborn. “So?”

“You’re just going to worry the whole time.”

“So what?” Bucky murmurs sullenly. “You’re having _surgery_. I’m allowed to worry.”

“It’ll be fine,” Steve insists, aiming for nonchalant, but Bucky sees right through him.

They’ve been friends for long enough; by now, he can see when Steve’s scared as clear as day.

“I’m staying right here,” Bucky says, just as there’s a knock on the door. A nurse walks in, holding a glass of water and a cup with a few pills in it.

She eyes them both but doesn’t say anything about the way Steve’s glaring at Bucky. She just hands him the pills instead and explains they’re to calm him down.

“Can’t have you panicking for the next hour,” she says, smiling.

“Should give them to him,” Steve grumbles and swallows his pills. “He’s the one who’s worryin’.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. The nurse - her name tag reads _Anne_ \- laughs at him.

“I’m not worrying,” Bucky insists. “Why does nobody believe me?”

“Well, you don’t have to, anyway,” Anne says. “We have these kinds of surgery every day. Steve’s going to be just fine.”

Bucky doesn’t know how to make her understand that because it’s _Steve_ , everything is fundamentally different, so he chooses a brooding silence instead.

Nurse Anne just raises her eyebrows and turns back to Steve. “You should put on your gown now. We’ll come get you in an hour.”

Steve smiles at her. “Thank you.”

When she leaves the room, Steve gets ready to put on his hospital gown. Bucky averts his eyes and busies himself with texting Sam. It’s not _weird_ for them to change in front of each other, being childhood friends and all, but ever since Bucky repeatedly caught himself looking longer than was appropriate, he tried to avoid falling into the tricky trap that was Steve’s smooth skin.

 _Text me when he’s back_ Sam writes him.

 _Will do_ Bucky answers, knowing full well he’ll probably text Sam every minor update possible anyway. Just because he doesn’t want Sam to worry, obviously.

Steve gets quiet when he settles into his bed. Bucky can’t help but think of how _vulnerable_ Steve looks like this, with his skin so pale against the light blue hospital gown that he almost does look like he got wheeled in with an ambulance - while in reality, they’d been sitting in a doctor’s office while the specialist explained that Steve’s asthma had caused chronic sinusitis and they’d run out of options to treat it non-invasively. It’s a routine procedure, the doctor had told them, no need to worry. Risk of complication was minimal.

Well. Bucky’s nerves aren’t showing themselves to be impressed by that so far.

When the nurses come to wheel Steve away to surgery, Bucky resists the urge to walk after them. It’s not like they’d let him go very far, and he _does_ have some restraint, thank you very much.

... okay, so maybe he’s not as put-together as he’d like to be. Steve’s his best friend, for fucks sake, he’s allowed to be worried.

The nurses tell him that it’ll take a while for Steve to get back, three hours at least, so he doesn’t have to sit around here and wait. Go for a walk, they tell him. There’s a mall not too far from here, go distract yourself a bit.

Bucky declines as politely as he can. It is, after all, not the nurses’ fault that he’s a fucking mess when it comes to Steve.

At first, he stays in Steve’s room and tries to do some reading for his courses, but it takes him almost fifteen minutes to read the first paragraph, because his mind is somewhere else entirely. And then, about an hour after Steve went, they wheel in his roommate, who’s lying in the bed with a bleary look in his eyes and a horribly swollen nose.

The nurses ask him to leave and give their patient some quiet, but honestly, he feels like he would’ve suffocated in that room if he stayed any longer.

 _Steve’s gonna look like that_ some idiot part of his brain whispers.

Bucky shudders and makes a beeline for the coffee machine in the common room. He barely slept the last night. Though he’s seen a lot of Steve’s frail health, they’ve never been through this.

When the coffee kicks in and his worry leads to the desperate wish to do something, he calls Sam.

“You’re freaking out, aren’t you?” is he first thing Sam says.

Which, _rude_ , Bucky thinks. “I haven’t even said anything yet.”

Sam sighs. “Come on. We both know you have more than a soft spot for Stevie.”

“He’s having _surgery_ ,” Bucky defends himself weakly. “Of course I’m... concerned.”

“Sure,” Sam says lightly. “That’s why you’re waiting for him for hours.”

Bucky bites his lip. Sam’s always been good at looking through both his and Steve’s bullshit, and he’s nursing the suspicion that Sam knew about his feelings before he did himself.

“You should tell him,” Bucky’s friend continues when he lets the silence stretch too long. “Would save all of us a lot of headaches.”

“Very funny.”

“I’m being serious.”

“No,” Bucky says, resolutely. “He has enough to worry about as it is. It’s not a good time right now.”

“Will it ever be a good time, then?” Sam asks and Bucky can practically _hear_ his raised eyebrow.

“Shut up,” Bucky grumbles, without heat.

“Just, please try and get some distraction,” Sam says softly. “You’re only going to work yourself into a panic.”

Bucky doesn’t want him to worry, too, so he agrees, and Sam sighs in a way that tells he doesn’t believe him. When they hang up, Bucky goes to the hospital’s cafeteria, just to prove Sam’s silent judging wrong, and grabs something to eat. To his own chagrin, he has to admit he feels better after.

By the time Steve gets back, it’s almost completely dark outside. Bucky’s sitting in the common room reading one of the magazines on display there - apparently, Gwyneth Paltrow got married again, who knew - when he hears the rumbling of a hospital bed being wheeled down the hallway.

He’s on his feet before it’s even fully registered in his brain that Steve’s really back, nervously following the nurses to the end of the hallway, where they maneuver the bed through the door and into the room. Bucky immediately hurries to drag a chair over to Steve’s bedside, while the nurse adjusts the IV running into his arm and tells him to not try and get up on his own.

(Bucky makes a mental note at that - better not let Steve out of his sight, god knew the stubborn idiot would try that anyway.)

When the door closes again and they’re alone - save for the other patient in the bed next to them - Bucky reaches out to take Steve’s hand without even consciously thinking about it.

Steve’s bleary eyes turn towards him slowly.

“Hey,” Bucky whispers.

Steve smiles at him and squeezes his hand weakly. Bucky takes it as a cue to leave their hands as entwined as they are.

“How are you?” Bucky asks.

“Floaty,” Steve mumbles, so softly Bucky almost doesn’t catch it.

“Yeah?” Bucky asks, smiling a little. “Nothing hurts?”

Steve shakes his head, which Bucky’s immensely glad for. With the way Steve’s nose has already begun swelling, it probably wouldn’t be very pleasant, if not for the pain meds.

“‘M gonna sleep some more,” Steve proclaims.

“You _just_ got back here,” Bucky says, without any real protest. Instead of an answer, Steve’s breathing evens out and his eyes fall shut.

Bucky sighs and resigns himself to sit in silence for a while longer.

Not that he wants to be anywhere else. Steve looks so small, so exhausted and _vulnerable_ in his gown, with the blanket tucked around his shoulders and blood steadily oozing out of his nose and into the tissues under it, the thought of leaving Steve alone like this fills him with dread.

(He’s also ashamed to admit that he involuntarily tenses up when the nurse comes back to take Steve’s blood pressure; Sam would have a field day with this later.)

When Steve wakes up properly, his roommate’s already changed into proper clothes and tentatively eating dinner.

Steve frowns. “How long’s it been?”

Bucky shrugs. “About two hours since you got back. You should have some water.”

He holds out the plastic cup to Steve, remembering the nurse telling them that drinking water’s important. Steve takes it, a puzzled look on his face. “You stayed here the whole time?”

Bucky shifts in his seat. “Well, yeah.”

Instead of teasing him, like Bucky expected Steve would, he just utters a small “Thank you.”

Warmth blooms in Bucky’s chest, an incredibly deep affection that he’s gotten used to feeling around Steve. It makes him want to wrap Steve in his arms, makes him want to kiss him and right now, with the low lighting and the quiet, he’s tempted to do it.

Steve blinks slowly. “What is it?”

Bucky jolts out of his thoughts. “Nothing, just...”

“Worrying?” Steve asks with a teasing lilt to his voice.

Bucky sighs. It’s not like denying it would do any good. “Yeah.”

Steve smiles. There’s still something exhausted in his eyes, and apparently, it knocks down a whole lot of walls in both of them. “You always worry. Even tho’ y’ don’t have to. It’s cute.”

Bucky almost chokes on his own spit. “What do you mean I... Just, what?”

Steve opens his mouth to answer, then suddenly turns paper-white, a look of dread clouding his face as he sits up at once.

Bucky straightens in his seat immediately, hands going to Steve’s shoulders. “What is it?”

“I’m gonna be sick.”

Unfortunately, Bucky’s not a stranger to Steve’s bouts of nausea either. Whenever doctors upped the doses of his medication or added new ones, Steve’s stomach wasn’t too happy about it.

Within just a few seconds, Bucky tugs the trashbag from Steve’s bedside table and pushes it under Steve’s face just as the first round of heaving starts.

To Bucky’s horror, the liquid coming out of Steve’s mouth is tainted with red.

As soon as Steve leans back a little, Bucky’sfumbling for the call button. Steve’s shaking now, and there’s all sorts of horror scenarios running through Bucky’s head - what if there’s internal bleeding, what if something went wrong during the surgery after all -

When the nurse walks in, she takes one look at the bloodstained plastic bag in Bucky’s hands and sighs. “You’ve been throwing up, huh?”

“Yeah,” Steve murmurs.

“Th- There’s blood,” Bucky cuts in, unable to keep the tremor from his voice.

“Yeah,” the nurse says, way more composed than the two of them. “Open your mouth for me, okay?”

She shines a flashlight into Steve’s throat. “There’s bleeding, that’s probably why you threw up. But it’s nothing dangerous, don’t worry. If you throw up again, we can give you something against the nausea.”

“Thank you,” Steve croaks.

“She coulda given you something right away,” Bucky grumbles when the door closes behind her, though he _is_ relieved she took the bloody bag with her.

Steve shakes his head. “Don’t want more meds anyway.”

“Sure,” Bucky says, feeling incredibly exhausted. He has no idea what time it even is; and their - Steve’s - ordeal seems to be far from over.

Steve frowns at him. “Buck? You okay?”

“Yeah.” He sighs, wishing for all of this to be over. For Steve to be healthy, for once. “Just, I don’t like seeing you so...” He trails off, unsure how to properly describe what Steve looks like.

“‘m glad you’re here,” Steve murmurs.

Bucky watches his eyes go half-mast again as he remembers what Steve said before the bloody contents of his stomach had come back up. It’s obvious Steve’s not quite back to his usual self, which is probably why he said it in he first place, but still. Bucky can’t help but wonder...

“Why’d you say that?”

Steve frowns at him. “Say what?”

_Damn. Stevie’s really not back online yet._

Bucky swallows, suddenly more nervous than he wants to admit. “That I’m... uh, you know. Cute.”

Steve stares. “I... said that out loud?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit.”

Bucky forces himself to take a deep breath. Steve’s still recovering from surgery and anesthesia; it’s not fair to expect him to explain everything by himself.

“Did you, uh, mean it?”

Steve looks at him. There’s fluid leaking out of his eyes and Bucky’s not quite sure if it’s tears or not. Whatever the case, the gravity of the conversation they’re having must be slowly getting through to him, because his gaze is proper scared.

“Yeah,” Steve eventually says, quietly.

Bucky bites his lip. He doesn’t want to read too much into it in case Steve doesn’t really mean it but... it’s too important to let it slide.

“You’re cute too,” he whispers, as loud as he dares.

Steve stares at him, and as it gets through to him that yes, the sentiment is very much returned, his lips widen into a huge smile. “I really like you, you know? Shoulda said it earlier, but I just... just didn’t know you’d want me.”

Bucky takes one of Steve’s hands in his and gently squeezes them. “Well, I do. I really do. I should’ve said something earlier, too. But now’s okay too. We’re okay.”

Steve smiles weakly. “That’s... that’s great.”

He seems _exhausted_ , from throwing up, from surgery, from the conversation they just had. And Bucky, more than anything, just wants him to get better.

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow, okay? You get some rest.”

It’s a testament to how tired Steve’s feeling; he doesn’t argue and lies back down on the mattress. It barely takes five minutes for him to fall back asleep.

But that’s okay, Bucky figures. Steve’s gonna be okay, and that’s the most important thing. They have all the time in the world.


End file.
